I have running conversations with myself 24/7 and I wonder if that’s an only child thing or if others do it, too. It was clear to me (and the 3 of you reading this) that the convos in my head were mostly whining and being pissy because that’s all I shared on these here pages. Efforts at being positive felt fake because that wasn’t what I was feeling.

For five days in April, when I was at Paisley Park, I felt complete joy. A calmness inside myself that I’ve not really experienced for any length of time. I traveled with two lovely women who bickered like friends who know each other so well and that bickering never once impinged on my joy. I sat in the backseat, content to go along with them on whatever journey they had planned.

It was such a profound sense of inner peace that I wanted to bottle it up, take it home and keep it for all time all the while knowing that I couldn’t and the work was just to feel it as deeply as I could.

A personal shift happened and it’s really yet to come through all the way but pieces are here and there. Prince has taken a seat behind me as I drive the car myself now. He’s still there, of course, but I know now that my skills are as good as they’ve ever been and I walk into the world as Lisa, the Oracle. More fully than before, and certainly bolder.

I start Level 4 Priestess work this month and I am so blessed to have been involved with Seven Sisters Mystery School. Prince led me there but it was up to me to use the skills. My mentor/teacher said I am a “stellar oracle” which thrilled me to death. (YEY me!)

Looking for ways to take myself into a bigger space with those skills so I can help others expand into their space. The more we open up to it, the better we’ll all be (IMO).

BIG NEWS: I am a Certified Priestess of the Dove Oracle! YEY! ANd I’m moving on to Level 3 which is about getting out there in the world as an Oracle.

BIG NEWS: Got my bottom braces on. What a pain in the ass. Lordy. But that’s where all the jacked-up-ness is so no wonder it sucks. This, too, shall pass.

BIG NEWS: I’ve lost about 7 lbs just from having too much metal in my damn mouth. Bikini season, here I come! (hahah)

BIG NEWS: I’m going to Celebration 2018 at Paisley Park – it’s a yearly celebration of Prince’s life and it is going to be jam packed with things to do, people to see and music to dance to. I’m excited to meet my online pals in person.

I was peeping through an old photo album today in the middle of cleaning the cat box and saw the picture of someone I refer to as “the bad boyfriend”.

I met him through an online BBS back in the days of the 2 line modems (1988). Tall, very thin, with a beard, he seemed intelligent and mysterious. We went out a few times and before you know it, he moved in to my meager little 2nd floor apartment in downtown Baltimore.

We were together -maybe- 6 months and it was during that time I learned what it meant to endure someone gaslighting me. Things I KNEW to be true, he lied about. And told me I was crazy. Everything I did was wrong, he said. He wore what little self-esteem I had to a damn nub.

Why did I allow this? Well, honestly, I hated to give up the best sex I had ever had. Like, he put me in some kind of trance. (I was 28, what do you want?) He was so bad but so good.

Of course, I found out that he was cavorting with someone else during this time and when I finally made the decision to kick his ass out, I gathered all his stuff and put it by the front door. Then, realizing I’d never have the opportunity to sleep with him again, unpacked it all and seduced him that night for one last time.

Then I told him to get out. (It sounds so brave now. I was a mess then. Like I said, I ran with whatever shred of self-esteem I had left.)

Saw him one last time after I had moved to Richmond VA. We went to the movies and fought on the way home. When I got out of the car, I walked over where he was standing and asked for my house key back. As he was taking it off the key ring, I got into a frenzy and grabbed it. He lifted his elbow (on purpose) and clipped me under the chin, knocking me over on the road.

“Look where your life is, Lisa. Get up.” said the voice in my head. I gathered my glasses that had fallen on the side and walked up the steps to my mother’s apartment. I didn’t want her to know (and I never told her all that had happened because I couldn’t bear her “I told you so” on top of shredded self-esteem and a messed up life).

I never spoke to or saw him again. He did pop up years later online in a strange way and didn’t know it was me. I longed to fuck with his head as he did mine but karma and whatnot.

Why all the reminiscing? Like I said, saw his picture today and played Sherlock on the googles. Turns out, he died in September. His brother posted something on his high school FB page that said he was “found deceased”. That’s all the info I can find.

It’s been almost 30 years since all that happened (Jeepers! Where has time gone??) but I remember a lot of it because it took me a year or more to get back to who I was before he came barreling through. I remember filing pages and pages and pages of my journal, doubting myself as he lied and lied and lied.

We had a short time together but I gained a lot of important life lessons. NEVER doubt my spidey sense – ever. And never let anyone tear me down like that.

I keep feeling these waves of sadness wash over me. I don’t think the sadness is mine but it’s possible, I suppose.

I felt it this morning and asked the Universe to return it to sender with love and consciousness and now it’s back again. I’ll be doing something, just working along and POOF! there it is. Just like a wave, ebbing in and out all day, every day.

It reminds me of how I felt a few days before Prince took his leave of the physical. I remember a deep melancholy that I knew without question wasn’t mine and there was no choice but to let it wash on through. My life changed in a profound way when P left. I wonder if this feeling is a portend of another shift.*

I feel myself moving away from the communities I’ve been in for many years as if I’ve learned what I needed and a new direction is showing up.

Things that I was fine with before Priestess Bootcamp now rub me the wrong way. It’s not a “I hate you” way, more of an “hmmm, what’s going on with this?” way.

Lots of shaking, shifting and growing happening.

It’s also a sign that I need to step away from politics more. I want to sit and cry when I look at what’s happening to our country. It’s been that way whenever I’m faced with gaslighting and I feel helpless. On one hand, I’m glad to see people awakening as much as they are and getting involved. On the other, it’s not happening fast enough and I feel like we are all slowly being boiled to death in that frog pot.

The only thing that’s making me happy these days are my Southern Sister books on Audible. When I think about writing a little cozy mystery book and then ask who cares about your dumb little stories, I remind myself that this book series almost single-handedly pull me out of the doldrums time after time. They are my go-to comfort space.

The last book that Anne George wrote in this series wraps things up and never made it to Audible (dammit!). I can’t bear for it to end so I have only made it through the first couple chapters.

With 45 in office for who knows how much longer, I might need to read it to myself and rock back and forth in the closet.

*(That one wasn’t bad. It was big, but not bad (for me, anyway. Not so much for Prince although he might disagree from his new space!).